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Under Air Force General Order No. 78, dated 29
May 1943, the 465th Bombardment Group (H) was activated on 1
August 1943 at the Army Air Base, Alamogordo, New Mexico. It
consisted of Headquarters and four Squadrons: the 780th, 781st,
782nd, and 783rd. Under Special Order No. 4,
dated 4 October 1943, the 465th Bombardment Group (H) was
ordered to the Army Air Base, McCook, Nebraska, to begin its three
phases of combat training.

The 465th Heavy Bombardment Group
arrived at the base on October 7 and the training of this group was
rigidly governed by War Department requirements, the 2nd Air
Force, and 16th Bombardment Operational Training Wing
policies. Training of the ground echelon proceeded in a normal and
satisfactory manner. Initial lack of ground firing ranges impeded
progress but the qualifications of the personnel met the minimum
requirements of the War Department. The group maintained the best
bombing score of any group in the 2nd Air Force.

The Group departed in
February 1944 eventually arriving at Pantanella near Canosa, Italy in
April 1944, and became part of the 55th Bomb Wing of the
Fifteenth Air Force.

On 5 February 1944, the
ground echelon and two combat crews, plus other flight crew members
boarded a train at McCook, Nebraska — their destination the staging area
at Topeka, Kansas. They arrived there on 6 February 1944 and
stayed a few days during which time they completed final processing,
physical examinations, and clothing and equipment checks.

The Group was given
orders for shipment to Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia. After a short
stay they were then sent to the Port of Embarkation, Newport News,
Virginia, for the trip across the Atlantic Ocean. The Group
personnel, were assigned to Liberty ship "Walter Ranger" for the trip to
Oran, Algeria. The Walter Ranger departed from Newport News on 15
February 1944, joining the convoy of some eighty odd vessels for final
departure the following day. It took twenty-two days to zigzag
across to Oran. The journey overseas was not entirely uneventful,
one vessel was torpedoed near Bizerte, Tunisia, and another struck a
mine in the same area. The torpedoed ship sank shortly after being
struck, but the other was able to make port.

After a lengthy stay in
Oran, sleeping in tents near the edge of the desert, the Group personnel
boarded the "SS Lyons" for the trip to Naples, Italy. After a long
delay at Naples they were loaded in old railroad cattle cars for the
trip to Pantanella, Italy, where the Group Airfield was located.
There was neither food nor water on the train for the men.
However, the train stopped about every twenty or thirty minutes along
the way. The stops brought out the Yankee ingenuity in the men.
At one stop near a U.S. Army Depot some of the men created a diversion
for the Army guards while others made a raid on the canned food stored.
At other stops the troops scrounged any food or water they could find.
There were approximately 350 men crammed in the cattle cars for the two
day trip to Pantanella where they arrived in late April 1944. The
first job for these men was to set up all the tents, messhall, and burn
the hay out of the flight briefing room which was located in an old
barn. They also helped to lay the steel matting that formed the
runway and parking ramps for the B–24s.

The flying echelon
(less the two crews that had accompanied the ground echelon) left the
air base at McCook on 5 February 1944 for the staging area, at Lincoln,
Nebraska. There the crews were processed, clothing checked, and
new equipment issued. The planes were given hundred-hour
inspections and some had minor modifications made. The crews left
Lincoln on 13 February 1944 for Morrison Field, West Palm Beach,
Florida. The crews spent two or three days at Morrison. They
spent this time getting last-minute lectures, doing some processing, and
making wills and allotments or last-minute changes in the many papers
filled out prior to overseas departure. Also final checks were
made on the airplanes and clothing, mainly flying gear. The crews
were given briefings for the next legs of the trip — to Trinidad and
then Belem, Fortaleza, and Natal, Brazil. The navigators were
issued a complete set of maps for the trip to Brazil. Each of the
crews filed a flight plan for Waller Field, Trinidad, which was the
first stop. The crews left Morrison Field for Waller Field on 16
February 1944. Takeoff time started at about 0330 hours local
time, which gave the navigators a couple of hours for celestial work in
preparation for the long flight over the Atlantic. Some crews made
a stop at San Juan, Puerto Rico, to get additional fuel and a few cases
of Puerto Rican rum. The crews spent one night at Waller Field.

The next stop on the
trip was Belem, Brazil. The crews started the takeoffs from Waller
Field on the morning of 17 February 1944 and arrived at Belem in the
afternoon after flying over jungle and some expanse of water along the
coastline. The field at Belem was used extensively and the
sleeping quarters were comfortable. On 18 February 1944, the crews
left Belem for Fortaleza and Natal, Brazil, a flight that was also
primarily over water and jungle.

After the crews had
rested overnight, they began the flight across the Atlantic to Dakar,
Africa and all made the ocean crossing without any trouble. After
an overnight stay in Dakar, the crews filed their flight plans for
Marrakech, Morocco. On this flight some of the planes were forced
to land at Tindouf, Algeria, because of the weather. This was an
emergency landing field on the edge of the Sahara Desert with no
overnight accommodations. Some of the crews had to spend several
days and nights there sleeping in the planes. The wind blew all of
the time and the nights were cold. The crews were glad when the
weather cleared so they could continue the flight to Marrakech.
After a short stay in Marrakech, they continued to Oudna Air Base, North
Africa. The stay at Oudna was to last for some two months while
waiting for the completion of the base at Pantanella, Italy.

"This book will retrace the mission of one solitary B-24 Liberator
bomber crew on a single day in March 1945 when they met their 'fate,
somewhere among the clouds above.' We will see the kindred spirit
of complete strangers who were thrust into and subsequently banded
together by untenable circumstance, to rise and act to cast off the yoke
of evil."

A true WWII account of twin brother fighter pilots Delbert and Delmer
Forsberg, who along with their crews were shot down behind enemy lines
while flying B-24 Liberator Bombers. With the help of Yugoslavian
Partisans, Delbert and his crew would make a perilous escape hiking
rugged mountains at night and remain hidden during the day, at times
being so close to the enemy he could have touched them. Delmer and all
but one of his crew would be captured by the Germans becoming Prisoners
of War and forcibly marched from Stalag to Stalag often in below
freezing conditions. At one point, Hitler would give orders for the
prisoners to be marched to their final destination in dead of winter
without benefit of shoes or belts to prevent their escape. Always on the
verge of starvation, Delmer tells about daily survival inside prison
camps and how innovative humans can be in such dire circumstances.
Neither twin would know the fate of the other until after the war ended.